We’ve already seen Huawei trademark the term “Groufie” in order to make panoramic selfies, while HTC’s One mini 2 features a 5MP front-facing camera in order to “dominate the selfie market.” It appears that Sony is now hopping on the selfie bandwagon with its latest smartphone: the Xperia C3.

The Xperia C3 is billed as the “the world’s best selfie smartphone” and even features what Sony calls a “PROselfie cam” — no, we’re actually not making that one up. The 5MP, front-facing camera even has its own soft LED flash, an enhanced auto mode, and a number of apps to help you ham it up for social media.

“The rise of selfies shows no signs of abating – its usage has increased by 17,000% since 2012 with the word officially being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013,” said Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing at Sony Mobile Communications. We’re excited to offer SONY’s first ‘PROselfie Smartphone’ and play a part in this global phenomenon.”

Once you get past the PROselfie cam, everything else about the Xperia C3 is decidedly ho-hum. The smartphone comes equipped with a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, microSD slot, a 5.5” 720p display, dual SIM slots, LTE connectivity, and Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

The Xperia C3 will debut first on the Chinese market in August, and then will spread worldwide shortly thereafter.

The text said "soft" flash. If Sony managed to execute that correctly - and they do have some decent photography related experience, so I expect they could - this alone will benefit selfie taking more than front camera resolution boost.

I like design of this phone, btw... and other recent Sony phones... much more than Samsungs. If I decide to give Android a go, likely to be Sony.

There is no such thing as "soft" light or "hard" light. Light is light. When photographers refer to soft light, they mean the light source was large, causing the edges of any shadows it produces to softly fall off from light to dark. In contrast, a small light source will produce shadows with a hard edge - quickly transitioning from light to dark.

So any flash emanating from a tiny LED will produce a hard shadow. Unless you can get light to bend around corners, that's just the way the physics work. (Note that it is possible to do this via diffraction, but not in any meaningful way for the purpose of producing shadows.)

OTOH, it's easy to produce a soft shadow with a front-facing cell phone camera: Don't use a dedicated LED flash. Just light up the entire screen as bright white for your flash.

quote: I like design of this phone, btw... and other recent Sony phones... much more than Samsungs. If I decide to give Android a go, likely to be Sony.

I hear you. I've been a fan and user of Sony phones since long before they started making smartphones. My current phone is an Xperia Pro, which is definitely showing its age at this point. My girlfriend has an Xperia M. Both are/were great phones. That said, I have two main gripes with Sony's current offerings:1) They are more expensive than other brands with equivalent specs.2) They don't use Gorilla glass. They advertise "scratch resistant" glass, but in my experience it is not very resistant and a screen protector is absolutely needed.

Initially I had planned on upgrading to an Xperia M2, but due to the above factors I instead decided on a Moto G 4G. The Moto also has the benefit of shipping with KitKat and having longer-term support via Cyanogenmod due to its popularity.

The only thing keeping me from annoying all my friends with shameless selfies was the lack of a 5mp camera and a flash on the front. I can't wait to take these at night while driving after leaving the club. It will be TOTS EPIC!